#91 Sam Smith: From Northern Rock Crisis to London IPO and Super Scalers

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Sam Smith spent 24 years building FinCap from a single desk and a phone into a London-listed investment bank, becoming one of the few women to lead a public financial business in the UK. She bet on small caps when the big banks were running for the exit, kept hiring when her own team thought she was reckless, and walked away at her best year ever. Now she's putting everything she learned into Super Scalers, a community helping underrepresented founders scale past £50 million.

In this episode:

• The summer sandwich round at age 17 that doubled takings in two weeks, and the family bakery moment Sam only recognised as entrepreneurial 20 years later
• Why she walked away from the Schroders and Morgan Stanley route on the day she qualified as an accountant, against the advice of literally everyone she knew
• Building a corporate finance division at 24 with nothing but a desk, a phone and three books on company law
• The MBO signed on 1 August 2007 — two weeks before Northern Rock collapsed across the road from her office
• Why she kept hiring aggressively through the financial crisis while her team begged her to stop, and the four months in 2009 when fees stopped completely
• The first redundancies she ever made, the coach she had to bring in, and the moment she still describes as one of the hardest of her career
• The 48-hour ultimatum to raise £2.5 million for the secondary buyout, the chairman who underwrote her on the spot, and the team that delivered the money in 24
• Why she gave everyone the same allocation, from receptionist to senior partner, and what that single decision did to the culture
• The IPO timed against Theresa May losing her cabinet, and the "last man standing" mindset that got the deal over the line
• Why she prefers loaning staff money to buy shares over handing out free options, and what skin in the game actually changes
• The 10 days after stepping away that she calls the worst of her life, and why she still knew it was 110 percent the right call
• Super Scalers, Rosaleen Blair, and the 144 women in the UK who have built businesses past £50 million in revenue

A conversation about trusting your gut against every voice in the room, treating culture as the real point of difference, and ranking your own happiness out of ten every single day.

This podcast is produced by Tribunista

Sponsored by Capital Partners